The King Released from Prison

A prison door creaks open in Babylon. An old man shields his eyes from the light. For thirty-seven years he has been a prisoner. And now a guard says: come out. The king wants to see you.

The book of Second Kings tells a long, sad story. The kings of Judah, David's descendants, turned away from God again and again. At last the armies of Babylon came. When Jehoiachin was only eighteen and had reigned just three months, King Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem. Jehoiachin surrendered, and he was carried off to Babylon with his mother, his officials, and thousands of Jerusalem's craftsmen and leaders. Eleven years later, Jerusalem was destroyed, and the temple burned. The book seems to end in ashes. A king of David's line sits in a foreign prison, and there is no throne in Jerusalem at all.

Imagine those years. Jehoiachin was eighteen when he was taken. Now he is in his fifties. His city is in ruins. The prophet Jeremiah had spoken bitter words about him, that he would be like a signet ring pulled off God's hand, and that none of his children would sit on David's throne and rule again in Judah. For most of his life, Jehoiachin lived with those words. And yet God had promised David that his house would last for ever. How could both be true? While he waited in prison, there was no sign at all that God had not forgotten.

Then, in the thirty-seventh year of his captivity, on the twenty-seventh day of the twelfth month, everything changes. Nebuchadnezzar has died. His son, called Evil-merodach in the Bible, becomes king of Babylon. And in the very year he begins to reign, he lifts up the head of Jehoiachin king of Judah out of prison. That is the Bible's lovely phrase for it: he lifted up his head. He spoke kindly to him. He gave him a seat of honour above the other captive kings who were with him in Babylon.

Jehoiachin takes off his prison clothes. And for the rest of his life, he eats regularly at the king's table. Every day he is given an allowance from the king, a portion for each day, as long as he lives. That is where Second Kings ends. Not with a king on his throne in Jerusalem. Just with a king of David's line out of prison, wearing new clothes, sitting at a table. It is a small ending. But it is like a tiny green shoot pushing up through burnt ground. David's line was still alive. God had not finished. And Matthew lists Jechoniah, this same Jehoiachin, in the family tree of Jesus.

This is one of the most remarkable confirmations of a Bible detail from archaeology. In the ruins of Nebuchadnezzar's palace in Babylon, excavators found clay tablets listing rations of oil and grain given out to foreigners held at the royal court. Among them is Yaukin, king of the land of Yahud, that is, Jehoiachin king of Judah, together with his five sons. The tablets come from Nebuchadnezzar's reign, years before his release, and show Jehoiachin already being fed by the Babylonian king.

You'll find this quiet ending in Second Kings chapter twenty-five, verses twenty-seven to thirty, and almost the same words close the book of Jeremiah. A prisoner of David's line was lifted up and given a place at the king's table. One day his descendant Jesus would invite prisoners of every kind to a far greater table. So here is a question to carry with you. When it looks as if a story has ended in ashes, what might God still be doing?